November 2010

New Report: The Class of ’09 Majored in Borrowing
“Student Debt and the Class of 2009,” a new report from the nonprofit Project on Student Debt, reports some stiffening statistics about student borrowing in America.
Some highlights . . .
Did you know that students are borrowing more every year? College seniors who graduated in 2009 from four-year public and private American universities carried an average of $24,000 in student loan debt - up six percent from the previous year.
Did you know how scarce jobs are for recent grads? The unemployment rate for recent college graduates rose from 5.8 percent in 2008 to 8.7 percent in 2009. That’s the highest annual increase on record. Clearly, lots of recent grads are going ...

Henry David Thoreau Went to StraighterLine
Okay, we admit it. The title of today’s post is a lie. Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), the great American transcendentalist philosopher, never took courses at StraighterLine.
But if StraighterLine had been around when Henry David was alive, he would have been a student here. If his cabin on Walden Pond had been equipped with WiFi, he would have logged right on and started taking online college courses.
Here are a few reasons why . . .
Henry David liked to keep things simple. He wouldn’t have had a lot of patience with the rigmarole that it takes to get into college today. That’s why he said, “As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler.”
Henry Dav ...

The Biggest Black Friday Sale of All
While all the other people are driving to the mall at 5:00 a.m. on Black Friday, you can save more money than they ever will, just by going online and signing up for some college courses at StraighterLine.
Instead of buying a vacuum cleaner for $99, you can spend the same amount on a course in College Algebra or English Composition.
Instead of plopping down $999 for a flat screen TV, you can spend that sum on your first year of college.
You’re getting the idea. But did you stop to think that StraighterLine courses aren’t only discounted on Black Friday? They’re also discounted on Blue Monday, Red Wednesday, Purple Saturday and all the other holidays we know and love.
The difference i ...

Thanks to You, Our Students, On Thanksgiving
Thanksgiving is a time to give thanks to people who have made a difference. And that’s why the StraighterLine Blog is taking this opportunity to thank all the students who have come to us in the last year seeking a better path to college learning.
So here are some things we would like to say . . .
Thank you, students, for having the courage and vision to seek out a better way to jump-start your college learning process.
Thank you to the many military personnel and veterans who are studying at StraighterLine. Thanks, first and above all, for your service to our country. But thank you too for making StraigherLine and our Partner Colleges your educational options of choice.
Thank you ...

Try College for Free with StraighterLine
Would you like to try a free college course with StraighterLine? Great! StraighterLine is now offering a way for you to sample one of our courses – at no charge – before you decide to enroll. There’s no fee, no obligation, you simply sign up and try out your free online college course.*
Here are the courses you can use to take a free trial of college:
Business Statistics
College Algebra
Accounting I
Economics I
English Composition I
Precalculus
Why is StraighterLine making these sample college courses available to you? It’s because we want you to select StraighterLine as your online institution.
But there’s another reason too – we have noticed that when students ...